Gun violence has become an epidemic in America. It is surprising how gun violence is such a huge problem, despite the country being ranked among one of the world’s most developed countries.
So the question is, why is gun violence increasing day by day and becoming a monumental problem tough to tackle? Well, the documentary, “The Armor of Light,” tries to identify the source of the mishap and ventures to find solution to it. The documentary tracks the journey of an evangelical minister, Reverend Rob Schenk, who speaks about his constituency as a very conservative person. Along his journey, he meets Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, an unarmed teenager who was shot to death in Florida for playing his music loud.. The documentary, “The Armor of Light”, meticulously emphasizes the growing toll of gun violence in America due to an easy access to a firearm by untrained people, which puts innocent lives at risk, resulting in self-inflicting injuries both by suicide and unintentional incidents making the lethality of the crime incredibly high. In the documentary, Rob states his fear of how we are replacing the second commandment over the second amendment. The second amendment boils down to individual Americans’ right to bear arms, shifted by the National Rifle Association. The book, Gun violence in America by Alexander Deconde goes in-depth analyzing challenges the folklore surrounding gun use and brings the balance to the debate about gun control.
It also explains why the United States, with all its resources, fails repeatedly to confine gun violence to the same low levels achieved by other advanced democracies. Alexander delves into the myths and politics regarding gun-keeping, as well as the controversies over gun use, crime, and policing from the early days of the republic to the present. The fact that the second amendment to the constitution appears to protect the right of the citizenry to keep and bear arms has led many Americans to assume that our forebears were uniformly a gun-loving people “a long and, in many cases, glorious tradition of gun ownership and gun use.” (3) This quote shows the relationship between gun and America has been an old romance shielded by the second amendment giving America’s gun right supporters the power to change the gear on the country’s politics. In the book ” The gun control Debate” by Bijlefeld examines all aspects of debate, including the history and development of the second amendment, which emphasis on my documentary research spotlight “Stand your ground”, providing a defense in criminal cases. The murderer of Jordan Davis appealed to this same law, which ultimately gave him the courage to shoot Jordan just because he thought his appeal would be accepted if he pleaded to the “stand your ground” law. In addition, the book provides documents that explore the developing legal theories, the increased attention by criminologists, and the role played by the public health and law enforcement communities.
What is the reason that has brought us to a place of embracing popular gun culture? And what one can possibly say to this question is, to defend oneself. There is a deep rooted fear within the country, a fear of being prosecuted by the federal government- and many of , Reverend Rob Schenk colleagues and friends and the people in the church told him that they have to be able to defend themselves against anyone that come after them. By opposing Reverend Rob Schenk, ideas about gun control they tell him, that even the bible suggest that a man has to be able to protect his wife and children or it is worse than infidelity. Who can stop a bad guy? One of NRA most loved phrase is, “what stops bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” serving as a valid argument for protecting other innocent lives. In correspondence to Fleming’s, The strategic nature of framing a focusing event, which argues that focusing events serve as catalysts for bill introduction along three casual stories prevalent in gun control policy: restrictive, punitive, and lenient. The article attributes to my research by making the statement, “The principal argument here is that taking guns out of circulation, or preventing an increase in guns available, will lead to fewer gun crimes.” This article also brings to the surface that gun violence is more than a law enforcement problem.
It is a major well-recognized problem that threatens the security, and welfare of the society. Gun is a machine made to kill, and it can give a person a mindset that they can do anything, which in the case ends up being misused as the function to protect, hence, “when you’re motivated by fear, you’re motivated by something other that or sometimes opposite to faith in God.” (Rev. Rob Schenk) The Socialization of Conflict and Its Limits: Gender and Gun Politics in America, a study by Kristin, shows how gun rights groups have had little success in persuading women to become “pro-gun” in attitudes or behaviors.
Gun culture is a vast world of all sorts of different people, but the majority of gun enthusiast are often males. This study correlates with the documentary because, in the documentary there’s a grieving mother whose child was killed in a shooting and pleas for stricter gun regulation, where at the same time the study shows that women are not socialized to be aggressive in the same way that men are. Lucy McBath notes that people have more faith in their gun than in God. There is also a moment in the documentary where Lucy is heard asking Rob to help as they will listen to him. This shows how men are heard more and taken seriously on issue involving guns. Gun for the most part has been taken as something that express masculinity, this is because men are often not given the same space as women to explore their identities and express their emotion as they have been given a tough figure by the society. The need to take action is highly influenced by prior personal threat, damage, and trauma.
After the loss of her son, Lucy McBath becomes more aware of how gun violence is a huge problem that demolish a once happy and perfectly functional family. She became active on this issue because she didn’t want to see anyone else being the victim of such ignorance. The article titled, We Need to Talk About Mental Health Even If It’s Only a Sideshow to the Gun Control Debate, by Johnson, displays that every time a country is shaken by a tragic mass shooting and the loss of innocent lives, the same debates are repeated. In this debate many questions arise, discussing the correlation between mental illness and gun violence being one of the main agendas. “those on the right side of the political aisle suggest that the issue is one of mental illness rather than gun control, conversely, those who are more liberal or progressive in their political learnings are quick to condemn attempts to reframe the issue of mass shootings as a mental health problem.” (Johnson 201)The article,”School Shootings and the Legislative Push to Arm Teachers.” By Allen has a strong stance on how arming teachers will not solve violence in schools.
It unequivocally illustrates that increased gun access and gun possession are associated with heightened violence, thereby suggesting that increasing the presence of guns in schools is likely to have harmful effects on the nation’s students. The quote, “The US has more shooting than its developed peers. So, if more guns are added into circulation, it would very likely lead to more gun violence.” (28), this statement is a strong suggestion that arming more people in schools would do more harm than good. It is also a supportive article on why gun circulation need to be controlled. For the most part, gun violence is the product of fractured politics, because of the lack to make change and an underinvestment in prevention approaches that work.
Every time a big tragedy happens, the disclosure tends to focus on addressing a specific venue and wind up without any justice. Arming teachers in school thus simply becomes treating the problem rather than the symptom. Gun violence and related issue need to be treated from the roots, because it is a problem that escalates and gun ownership sits at the center of it. Reverend Rob Schenk, anti-abortionist and a fixture on the political far right, breaks with orthodoxy by questioning whether being pro-gun is consistent with being pro-life. An online article corelating with this question is an article titled, “Gun Control — for the Children.” By Jacob, he focuses on the effect of gun violence mainly on children. He shows an alarming statistic of how gun violence in America kills more than 30,000 and injures almost 70,000 each year, over 5,000 of the victims being innocent children and teens.
With more than 25% of children witnessing an act of violence in their homes, schools, or community over the past year, more than 5% witnessing a shooting, it becomes not just an issue of gun regulation, but also addressing the impact on those who have been traumatized by such violence. ” children who have witnessed a gun shooting are affected directly or indirectly” (Jacob).* children should embark on the positive things in life rather than be exposed to gun violence. This effect leaves a lifelong scar in children more than adults. Children have to live without the fear of having to witness a gun violence The Second Amendment, by Waldman is a book at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers. Waldman recounts the raucous public debate that has surrounded the amendment from its inception to the present.
He poses the question, “what does the second amendment mean? Is it not written to calm the public fear that the new national government would crush the state militias made up of all (white) adult men—who were required to own a gun to serve.” (94) This book argues persuasively that it was no coincidence that the Supreme Court only got around the affirming the individual’s right to gun ownership in 2008. The Second Amendment protected the individual right to a gun to fulfill the duty to serve in the militia. Guns have been part of man’s life for a while. As Humans we love things that give us the ability to do what we want to do and superiority. The establishment of the Second Amendment allows access to a controversial, yet well anticipated possibility for United State citizens to be able to posses guns.
Americans indulge the advantage of being able to own guns for decades over other countries. Guns are easily accessible that people can buy them and carry them around in public.The ownership can be for different reasons such as to hunt, to protect themselves, and simply to satisfy their want of owning a gun, however, in current years, the issue of carrying a gun has become a problem. “The Armor Of Light,”
